Posts Tagged ‘Charlie Hebdo’

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today (Monday, June 1) to affirm protection for “free speech” on social media and the internet – even if that speech is threatening or provocative.

The decision was handed down in the case of Anthony D. Elonis V. United States of America, affirming that threats made over the internet are protected, unless they are malevolent or reckless.

The case relates to Facebook posts by Elonis, who was convicted for making unlawful threats as he expressed anger about events in his life, basing the posts on rap lyrics of various artists.

In an amicus curiae brief (friend of the Court), The Rutherford Institute had argued the First Amendment protects even inflammatory statements that might give offense or cause concern to others unless the statements were a credible threat to engage in violence against another, and made by the defendant with the intent to cause fear in the alleged victim.

The decision is also particularly relevant to the brouhaha over the “Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” held in Garland, Texas a few weeks ago. Sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) run by Pam Geller, the event attracted an attempted attack by two terrorists, who opened fire on a security guard but were both shot and killed by police.

The event was organized in response to the radical Islamist attack on the Paris offices of the “Charlie Hebdo” French satiric magazine in January of this year, Geller said. “We decided to have a cartoon contest to show we would not kowtow to violent intimidation and allow the freedom of speech to be overwhelmed by thugs and bullies,” she told The Washington Post in an email statement.

The Finnish “World Village festival emphasizing the environment has banned the participation of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the largest environmental organization in Israel. The Finnish government feigned it was powerless to interfere in the boycott and told the Israeli Ambassador to Helsinki that it has no say in the matter because the “Maailma Kylässä” festival is a “private event.”

Dan Ashbel, the Israeli ambassador to Finland, said:

I wonder how this scandalous decision is consistent with values such as eco-friendliness, fairness, tolerance, and the desire for peace. I wonder if the rest of the organizations in the festival are required to stand up to the same criteria.”

However, the Finnish government’s security forces were able to convince the World Village to ban the Freedom of Speech village, warning that an exhibition supporting the freedom of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine to publish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed might cause violence.

The JNF has planted 240 million trees since 1901, and Israel is one of only two countries in the world that registered a net increase in the number of trees at the beginning of the 21st century.

It can be assumed that the organizers do the World Village were celebrating Boycott Israel when deciding to ban the JNF, which also has donated 3,000 trees to the Palestinian Authority for its new city of Rawabi north of Ramallah.

The World Village organizers figure that the environment is better off without a pro-environment organization, which is Jewish, and without a free speech environment that might upset Muslims.

Israeli Foreign Minister and Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Liberman holds the latest edition of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo during a protest in support of Charlie Hebdo in Tel Aviv on February 5, 2015.

The Israeli election committee forbidden Yisrael Beytenu political party to distribute any gifts or free merchandise to the public in such proximity to the elections — including the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo.

Magistrate Eric Van der Sypt told journalists at a briefing in Brussels that the terrorists were linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and were close to launching a major attack.

Counter terror raids are underway in the Brussels region at this time, as well as in Verviers, he said, and the terror alert level in the country has been raised to its second highest level.

The raids were part of the security establishment’s investigation into local jihadists who are returning to the country “battle-hardened” from Syria.

Another suspect is currently being detained in a separate part of the country on suspicion of selling arms that were used in last week’s terrorist siege in Paris.

Belgian media reported that suspect had turned himself in Tuesday in the southern city of Charleroi, saying he had been in contact with Amedy Coulibaly, one of the gunmen involved in last week’s Paris terror attacks.

It is not yet known whether the two are connected, nor whether those who were killed Thursday were directly tied to the Paris terror cells.

Hayat Boumedienne was in a big hurry as she passed through Turkey into Syria, but not such a hurry that she didn’t have time to spend a couple of days in a popular hotel in Istanbul. Enough time for Turkish intelligence to lift her fingerprints, too.

Turkey’s alert security services managed to collect the fingerprints of the wife of Amedy Coulibaly, an operative for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) even though they maintained they were “unaware” of her importance.

Coulibaly is believed to have killed a French policewoman on Jan. 8 and held more than a dozen people hostage at a kosher grocery the next day, killing four and wounding others before he was finally killed by French police.

Meanwhile Boumedienne had apparently slipped into Syria while all that was going on, and according to a report published in the Daily Hurriyet, after having arrived in Turkey on Jan. 2 to rendezvous with ISIS terrorists.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed on Monday, Jan. 12 that airport footage showed Boumedienne’s arrival in Turkey on Jan. 2, in addition to evidence from “telephone recordings” that she had stayed in Istanbul’s Kadikoy neighborhood and crossed into Syria on Jan. 8.

French authorities were aware of the information, Davutoglu said. “We provided them with the information as soon as we got it, without them even asking,” he told reporters, responding to claims by the Syrian Foreign Ministry that Ankara had allowed ISIS terrorists to travel through Turkey to Syria.

Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fiden was quoted by Hurriyet as saying that Turkey has deported 1,056 foreigners and imposed a travel ban on 7,833 others to prevent foreign fighters from joining jihadist groups in Syria.

According to the Daily Yeni Safak, Boumedienne stayed for two days at a hotel in the central Istanbul district of Kadikoy on the city’s Asian side, together with a man identified as Mehdi Sabri Belhouchine. The two left the hotel only twice in the two days they were there, the daily newspaper reported.

The British newspaper The Times reported that Boumedienne called France 18 times during her stay in Istanbul, before crossing into Syria. She traveled to the southeastern province of Sanliurfa on Jan. 4. According to the report, the last signal from her phone was picked up on Jan. 8, one day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the same day that her husband, Amedy Coulibaly, shot a policewoman.

“It is unlikely that she will cross again into Turkey, even with a fake identity, because her name has been revealed. Along with her fingerprints, her face has also been disclosed,” states a security report on Boumedienne, according to Hurriyet. “She will likely be [hidden] by the militant group. Then she might be dispatched to a different zone to operate.”

The office of one of the most influential Islamic clerics in the Middle East warned the remaining staff of the French satiric weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo to pull its intended cover cartoon for the January 14 edition.

The caricature, released earlier this week in previews to media, shows a depiction of the prophet Muhammed, founder of Islam, with a tear trickling down his face, holding a sign that reads, “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie) under the words, “Tout est pardonne” (All is forgiven.)

The work stands as a clear and obvious reference to last week’s murderous rampage by radical Islamist terrorists who targeted the magazine and its editorial staff, and the outcry by protesters that followed. The terrorists slaughtered only those on a list believed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to be responsible for past depictions of the prophet, ignoring ancillary staff at the site. A maintenance worker and another person who became caught in the crossfire also were killed, as were two police officers, one of whom was assigned to protect the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Stephan Charbonnier. He was the first of the staff to be murdered.

“Je Suis Charlie” was the rallying cry taken up by some four million demonstrators in Paris and even more in a show of solidarity around the world who stood in silence with candles, pens, pencils and protest signs to signal their determination that freedom of expression continue despite the threat of Islamic extremism.

During the three-day killing spree by two terror cells from Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that began with the Charlie Hebdo attack, 17 people lost their lives, including four Jews at a kosher grocery story on Friday just a few hours before the Sabbath. In addition, one of the magazine’s targeted top cartoonists was Jewish.

Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam warned in a statement that this week’s upcoming cover would be an “unwarranted provocation against the feelings of … Muslims around the world.”

The danger could in fact be magnified exponentially: the magazine’s usual run of 60,000 is allegedly to be expanded this week to as many as 3 million copies. Hoping to head off a worldwide radical Islamist wildfire, Allam called on the French government to reject the “racist act” by Charlie Hebdo, which he said was trying to provoke “religious strife” and “deepen hatred.”

Allam had previously called the attack on the magazine a “terrorist” act. Likewise, officials at the 1,000-year-old Egyptian Al Azhar Islamic Center, known to be the oldest center of Islamic studies in the world, referred to the attack as a criminal act.

Moreover, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called on Muslim clerics in an address at Al Azhar to “revolutionize” the Islamic faith and strive to combat extremist ideology – just two weeks before the radical Islamists carried out their reign of terror.

In Egypt, at least, moderate Muslims are beginning to step up and speak out, but that does not necessarily make them pro-Israel, as Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) pointed out. Jassser, a Syrian-American internist and nuclear cardiologist, has emerged as a major voice in countering Islamist extremism. He noted that in Egypt, there has been a change in attitude towards Islamist extremism — but not necessarily towards democracy or Israel.

One example, said Jasser, is that of Grand Sheikh Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed el-Tayeb, the leader of Al Azhar University and its mosque, appointed by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. El-Tayeb supported el-Sisi’s ouster of former Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. He has also condemned Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former Islamic cleric who now heads ISIS – but he has condemned Israel as a force for evil.

Israel is doing its part to let French Jews know they can and should come home to Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said so explicitly, and this evening Building and Construction Minister Ariel said he would expand the settlements to absorb all the French Olim (immigrants) as he believes the Jews of France will want to live there.

France, on the other hand, is terrified of what a mass exodus of its Jews would do and mean for the country, both financially and morally.

The Prime Minister of France called on the France’s Jews this evening to not leave the country because of the terror attacks, according to Galei Tzahal.

The French Prime Minister said, “We in the midst of a war with radical Islam and are still under threat. We must stand vigilant.”